The use of computing devices such as computer systems, smartphones, laptops computers, tablet computers, netbook computers, smart televisions, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cell phones, media players, gaming consoles (e.g., PlayStation®, XBOX®), smart televisions (TVs), etc., is now prevalent. Users often employ various computing devices and various applications to access content online. For example, a user may use a laptop computer and a first type of browser (e.g., Firefox®) to access a news website or a social networking website when the user is at home. The user may also use a smartphone and a second type of browser (e.g., Safari®) to access such websites (e.g., the news website and/or the social networking website) when the user is at another location (e.g., at work or at a grocery store, etc.). The user may also use various applications to access online content. For example, many publishers, such as news, email, and/or social network publishers (e.g., Yahoo®, Facebook®, CNN®, or other companies or entities that provide online content, etc.) provide applications which allow users to access email, website, and/or other content without using a browser application.
Many entities (such as companies that sell/market goods or services, advertisers, marketing firms, etc.) use various forms of online advertising to advertise and/or market various products and/or services to user. Online advertising may involve the serving of advertisements (e.g., banners, text, images, video clips, audio clips, other rich media, etc.) to users when the users access content (e.g., when a user visits a particular website or when a user views a particular streaming video). For example, when a user visits a website, an advertisement server may deliver and/or provide an advertisement to a region and/or portion of the web site for viewing by the user. The size and position of the advertisement may vary based on the design of the particular website. For example, the advertisement may be a banner with text and images that is displayed in a left region of the website (e.g., along the left side of the website). In another example, the advertisement may be a video clip that is displayed on the top region of the website (e.g., along the top of the website).
In order to achieve better targeting of specific audiences of users, many advertisers and/or companies use techniques such as cookies and pixels to track how users are interacting with different websites. Cookies may be data that is sent from a website and stored in a user's web browser. The cookie data may be accessed while a user is browsing the website. Some websites contain instructions that can save and edit information in a user's cookie. For example, a cookie generated by a retail website may contain information such as (i) products viewed and/or purchased by a user, (ii) information about the user such as internet protocol (IP) address, computer/browser type, and (iii) date/time of the user's last visit to the website. Pixels may be used to place and update cookies and may allow third parties (such as website publishers and/or advertisers) to place and update cookies in order to track how and when users are interacting with particular websites. By using cookies and pixels to track user interaction with certain websites, advertisers and/or companies may be able to personalize and orchestrate advertising or content to certain types of users based on information gathered from the cookies and pixels.